Editions of Mozart's Requiem

[bcschipper]

I am surprised by the large differences of trombone parts in various editions of Mozart's Requiem (Suessmayr)

In the autograph Mozart wrote four notes for trombones at the beginning, most of the tuba mirum, and that's it. I think it is pretty clear he wanted the trombones to support the choir as usual in Austrian/German sacred music.

A couple of weeks ago I received the Calmus edition for an upcoming performance. Many parts are tacet including the Kyrie, which is kind of disappointing for trombones.

Baerenreiter is better but not quite following the choir everywhere. Gorden Cherry has a slightly better version written out for trombones with alto in alto clef.

Eulenburg Edition doesn't show trombone parts except for the tuba mirum and an appendix on trombones that asked them to follow mostly the vocal parts.

I can imagine when trombones got bigger and alto players (on 1st) become more scarce, some conductors preferred them to be tacet. This may explain the strange score of the Calmus edition. But we play alto, tenor, bass.

Also, why don't the they print the words in the trombone parts? It helps with thinking about articulation.

[BGuttman]

Kalmus generally was reprinting German editions from before World War II. Kalmus got the printing plates when the US "liberated" the printing plant. I think the originals are Breitkopf.

The style of trombone playing from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th century was much more strident and probably didn't blend as well with voices so the doubling of the voice parts passed out of favor. In addition, alto trombones were extremely rare. I can envision a section of large bore tenors on 1st and 2nd with a 14 mm bore bass absolutely overpowering a modest chorus. And the music is intended for choral performance.

As we become more used to a section that better mirrors what was in use in Mozart's time, perhaps more choral doubling will be adopted with more interesting trombone parts to play in pieces like the Mozart Requiem or Handel's Messiah.

[Fafner]

Here's an important term to know: colla parte

Also trombone was always "huge" in certain areas of Europe and not-so-big in others. In Salzburg, where Mozart came from, it was still very popular and there was a stable of very good players. Vienna, on the other hand, was a different story.

[LeTromboniste]

Here's an important term to know: colla parte

Also trombone was always "huge" in certain areas of Europe and not-so-big in others. In Salzburg, where Mozart came from, it was still very popular and there was a stable of very good players. Vienna, on the other hand, was a different story.

Quite to the contrary, Vienna had no shortage of trombone players in Mozart's time, in fact it was one of the rare places with a strong tradition of trombone playing. There are works with trombones written in or for Vienna and the surrounding region throughout the entire 18th century.

[bbocaner]

The Robert Levin completion is really nice, all the colla parte trombone parts are there and there's an extra little fugue after each major section.

[bcschipper]

Kalmus generally was reprinting German editions from before World War II. Kalmus got the printing plates when the US "liberated" the printing plant. I think the originals are Breitkopf.

...

I wonder what edition Kalmus copied. The first as well as the revised Breitkopf & Haertel editions put the trombone solo of the tuba mirum to the bassoon (except for the opening fanfare). It is also not the edition from the 1870th.

[bcschipper]

Here's an important term to know: colla parte

Also trombone was always "huge" in certain areas of Europe and not-so-big in others. In Salzburg, where Mozart came from, it was still very popular and there was a stable of very good players. Vienna, on the other hand, was a different story.

Quite to the contrary, Vienna had no shortage of trombone players in Mozart's time, in fact it was one of the rare places with a strong tradition of trombone playing. There are works with trombones written in or for Vienna and the surrounding region throughout the entire 18th century.

Some Vienna composers with works featuring the trombone: Albrechtsberger, Wagenseil, Fux, Bertali, ...

[HowardW]

Some Vienna composers with works featuring the trombone: Albrechtsberger, Wagenseil, Fux, Bertali, ...

... Caldara, F. & I. Conti, Dolar (Tolar), Draghi, Gluck, J. Haydn (his brother M. Haydn also liked trombones, but was active in Salzburg), Leopold Hofmann, Pachschmidt, Pasterwiz, Porsile, Reinhardt, Reutter, Salieri, Sances, Ferdinand Schmid, Tuma, Valentini, Ziani, to name just a few more.

Howard

[Posaunus]

Some Vienna composers with works featuring the trombone: Albrechtsberger, Wagenseil, Fux, Bertali, ...

... Caldara, F. & I. Conti, Dolar (Tolar), Draghi, Gluck, J. Haydn (his brother M. Haydn also liked trombones, but was active in Salzburg), Leopold Hofmann, Pachschmidt, Pasterwiz, Porsile, Reinhardt, Reutter, Salieri, Sances, Ferdinand Schmid, Tuma, Valentini, Ziani, to name just a few more.

Howard

Howard,

So good to have you back on TromboneChat with your encyclopedic knowledge.

Too bad we aren't acquainted with the works of most of these composers (at least I have seldom heard them).

[bcschipper]

Some Vienna composers with works featuring the trombone: Albrechtsberger, Wagenseil, Fux, Bertali, ...

... Caldara, F. & I. Conti, Dolar (Tolar), Draghi, Gluck, J. Haydn (his brother M. Haydn also liked trombones, but was active in Salzburg), Leopold Hofmann, Pachschmidt, Pasterwiz, Porsile, Reinhardt, Reutter, Salieri, Sances, Ferdinand Schmid, Tuma, Valentini, Ziani, to name just a few more.

Howard

Thank you. Is there a good bibliography published somewhere with references where to find all these works?

[bcschipper]

Kalmus generally was reprinting German editions from before World War II. Kalmus got the printing plates when the US "liberated" the printing plant. I think the originals are Breitkopf.

...

I wonder what edition Kalmus copied. The first as well as the revised Breitkopf & Haertel editions put the trombone solo of the tuba mirum to the bassoon (except for the opening fanfare). It is also not the edition from the 1870th.

It seems that often just the entire score was published without parts. I guess for some performances, they just copied parts of parts (perhaps on purpose) and just such incomplete parts were printed at some point. I am still trying to figure out the story/rationale behind the incomplete Kalmus parts.

[LeTromboniste]

... Caldara, F. & I. Conti, Dolar (Tolar), Draghi, Gluck, J. Haydn (his brother M. Haydn also liked trombones, but was active in Salzburg), Leopold Hofmann, Pachschmidt, Pasterwiz, Porsile, Reinhardt, Reutter, Salieri, Sances, Ferdinand Schmid, Tuma, Valentini, Ziani, to name just a few more.

Howard

Thank you. Is there a good bibliography published somewhere with references where to find all these works?

Not yet, although I think something might be coming up soon?

A number of works exist in modern editions, most don't. You can get manuscripts for some. Some exist in modern editions but unpublished (i.e. made by performers for their own needs).

It's only a subset, but one partial bibliography of a specific genre of pieces can be found in Carter, Stewart, "Trombone obbligatos in Viennese oratorios of the baroque", Historic Brass Society Journal, Vol. 2, 1990

Subset of the subset : one great recording of some of these (and considered as one of the best trombone CDs ever by many of those who've listened to it, myself including) is Fede e Amor - Alex Potter, Catherine Motuz, Simen Van Mechelen, Carles Cristobal, and Ensemble La Fontaine (Ramée, 2013)

[bcschipper]

Thank you. Is there a good bibliography published somewhere with references where to find all these works?

Not yet, although I think something might be coming up soon?

A number of works exist in modern editions, most don't. You can get manuscripts for some. Some exist in modern editions but unpublished (i.e. made by performers for their own needs).

It's only a subset, but one partial bibliography of a specific genre of pieces can be found in Carter, Stewart, "Trombone obbligatos in Viennese oratorios of the baroque", Historic Brass Society Journal, Vol. 2, 1990

Subset of the subset : one great recording of some of these (and considered as one of the best trombone CDs ever by many of those who've listened to it, myself including) is Fede e Amor - Alex Potter, Catherine Motuz, Simen Van Mechelen, Carles Cristobal, and Ensemble La Fontaine (Ramée, 2013)

Thank you very much. I know the article by Carter. I didn't know about the CD. Moreover, I hope that somebody publishes a bibliography or even better the scores and parts.

[bcschipper]

I finally figured out from whom Kalmus copied. It is the publication of parts by Breitkopf & Hertel from 1890. Very strange since

• it doesn't seem to match the publication of Breitkopf & Hertel's score published earlier (first edition in 1800).

• it also doesn't seem to match the first printing of the parts from 1812 (although I was not able to check it. Yet Baerenreiter's edition is based on the first printing of parts and it does contain much more complete trombone parts).

• Kalmus itself says it is copied from Peters. Peters changed their editions. So I was not able to compare it to their old edition.

Now it is getting more confusing: The first copies of parts I could find are handwritten from 1823 from Joseph Palme, paster in Schoenlinde, all available at ismpl. Actually they contain two handwritten parts for each alto trombone and tenor trombone (in addition to the bass trombone). One is marked "incomplete part", another "complete part" ("Unvollstaendige Stimme" and "Vollstaendige Stimme", respectively.) The parts marked "additional part" in ismpl ('complete part') have the full Kyrie both for alto and tenor. More surprising: The tuba mirum is written as alto trombone solo!!! (See https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:Imagefro ... 23873/hfpn.) In the tenor part, the beginning of the tuba mirum is crossed out and and written alto trombone solo; see https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:Imagefro ... 23875/hfpn. So either we perform it wrongly nowadays or they put it for some reason to the alto trombone player at that time. It would be nice to get hold of the parts published earlier in 1812 and some information on their source.

By the way, here is an discussion of Howard Weiner and Doug Yeo about Mozart's Requiem: http://www.yeodoug.com/articles/text/mozartreq.html They don't really talk about the differences in parts of various editions though.

[HowardW]

Thank you. Is there a good bibliography published somewhere with references where to find all these works?

Yes, there is a good bibliography that contains information about nearly 9000 pieces composed before 1800, but it's not published... yet. We had a preliminary contract with a publishing company, but they unexpectedly pulled out of the project. We're still looking for a new publisher.

Howard

[HowardW]

It's only a subset, but one partial bibliography of a specific genre of pieces can be found in Carter, Stewart, "Trombone obbligatos in Viennese oratorios of the baroque", Historic Brass Society Journal, Vol. 2, 1990

This is a very good secondary source.

Subset of the subset : one great recording of some of these (and considered as one of the best trombone CDs ever by many of those who've listened to it, myself including) is Fede e Amor - Alex Potter, Catherine Motuz, Simen Van Mechelen, Carles Cristobal, and Ensemble La Fontaine (Ramée, 2013)

I was just about to mention this one myself. It is indeed a great recording with beautiful, stylish trombone playing.

Howard

[HowardW]

Now it is getting more confusing:

It's not really confusing at all. You have to keep in mind that when Mozart was composing the Requiem there were practically no trombonists anywhere outside of Vienna who could have played the colla parte parts, not to mention the Tuba mirum. (20-25 years later the situation had changed a bit in some places.) And of course a work with Mozart's name on it was potentially a big seller. Thus many publishers made changes -- e.g., assigned the Tuba mirum solo to the bassoon or cello, or split it up between various instruments -- so that the piece could be performed by orchestras that didn't have any trombones at their disposal, and in order to sell as many copies as possible. And Mozart wasn't around anymore to consult (or to complain about the things people were doing to his music).

Moreover, lacking photocopiers, it was not unusual for conductors (or their underlings) to copy out the parts by hand from a score, simultaneously making alterations to enable performances with the forces at their disposal: the second trombonist couldn't handle the Tuba mirum? Then give it to the first trombonist (who was most likely playing a tenor trombone anyway).

Howard

[bcschipper]

Now it is getting more confusing:

It's not really confusing at all. You have to keep in mind that when Mozart was composing the Requiem there were practically no trombonists anywhere outside of Vienna who could have played the colla parte parts, not to mention the Tuba mirum. (20-25 years later the situation had changed a bit in some places.) And of course a work with Mozart's name on it was potentially a big seller. Thus many publishers made changes -- e.g., assigned the Tuba mirum solo to the bassoon or cello, or split it up between various instruments -- so that the piece could be performed by orchestras that didn't have any trombones at their disposal, and in order to sell as many copies as possible. And Mozart wasn't around anymore to consult (or to complain about the things people were doing to his music).

Moreover, lacking photocopiers, it was not unusual for conductors (or their underlings) to copy out the parts by hand from a score, simultaneously making alterations to enable performances with the forces at their disposal: the second trombonist couldn't handle the Tuba mirum? Then give it to the first trombonist (who was most likely playing a tenor trombone anyway).

Howard

Interesting. So what does it mean for historical informed performances? Shouldn't we approach historical informed performances with the same flexibility. That is, shouldn't there be historical informed performances with the bassoons taking over the trombone parts or the tuba mirum being played with an alto trombone etc. That is, should historical performance practice aim to create the variety of performances at that time rather "the" correct historical performance?

[HowardW]

Interesting. So what does it mean for historical informed performances? Shouldn't we approach historical informed performances with the same flexibility. That is, shouldn't there be historical informed performances with the bassoons taking over the trombone parts or the tuba mirum being played with an alto trombone etc. That is, should historical performance practice aim to create the variety of performances at that time rather "the" correct historical performance?

"Historically informed performance" is a term that does not denote any exact parameters. It came into use to replace the more even problematic term "authentic performance." (See the section "Issues" in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historica ... erformance). Those who subscribe to historically informed performance often try to recreate the music as the composer intended it to be played, knowing full well that this is an impossible task given all the unknowns and imponderabilities. In fact, this means that we already have a great variety of performances of many works that may or may not come close to what the composer intended in spite of being labeled "historically informed." I don't know of anybody today who would claim that there is a single historically "correct" performance of anything. (Just listen to the first recording of Bolero, conducted by Ravel, with a first trombonist who obviously refused to play glissandos! Would playing the Bolero solo in that manner be considered historically correct? Of course, but you'd probably get laughed off the stage if you did.)

Mozart's Requiem is an especially daunting task, in as much as Mozart was not able to finish composing it, and all we have is an incomplete torso. I don't think that anybody who has attempted to complete it has ever claimed to have come up with a result equal to that what Mozart would have done. Although there are certain things we can learn from Mozart's earlier works: for example, the use of trombones to play colla parte with the respective choir voices.

Sure, it would be possible to mount a historically informed performance of one of the early published versions of the Requiem, but the question would be: Why? What could we learn from a version so distant from the work's creator?

Howard

[LeTromboniste]

Interesting. So what does it mean for historical informed performances? Shouldn't we approach historical informed performances with the same flexibility. That is, shouldn't there be historical informed performances with the bassoons taking over the trombone parts or the tuba mirum being played with an alto trombone etc. That is, should historical performance practice aim to create the variety of performances at that time rather "the" correct historical performance?

I'll grant you that nobody has to my knowledge has done performance of Mozart Requiem with the solo played on bassoon. (I would strongly disagree with it being played on alto trombone as it is much more likely the parts with the solo in the alto part were made for occasions where the 1st trombone was playing a tenor)

That being said there is much more variety in historically informed practice than you seem to think. My experience working in that field is that everytime I perform a work again, it will be vastly different from the previous project that had it, and I would argue there generally is quite a bit more diversity than in the modern orchestral world. It's funny that Howard mentions that we typically try to recreate the composer's intention. I'm not sure I completely agree. For most of the music we deal with as early music specialists, we don't know so much about the composer's precise intention, and I feel we're much more interested in presenting a compelling rendition that is within the general realm of possibilities of how the repertoire might have been played at the time, very much like you suggest for the Requiem. You will find performances of the same work that are so drastically different they might as well be different pieces, yet both are judged valid.

It does get somewhat less flexible the later we go, particularly starting with Bach, and there I would agree with Howard's assessment that the focus is on realizing the intention of the composer. I think there are a few reasons for that.

1) the composers get more and more clear and more and more specific in their performance directions, plus we usually know quite a lot more about the composers themselves. This makes it both easier to try to find their intentions and harder to justify not sticking to those intentions.

2) the music world in general has a sort of reverence to the great masters of the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly the Germanic ones. Somehow playing Bach or Mozart of Beethoven carries a lot more weight than playing Josquin or Palestrina or Gabrieli or Schütz. Again, incites us to stick to the composers intentions more - there's some kind of feeling of sacrilege if we don't.

3) when we deal with this repertoire we enter the domain of modern orchestras, which carries a long, heavy tradition. It's also a repertoire that is much, much more familiar to the audience. Both the musicians and the audience have much clearer expectations.

And of course one still has to find artistic reasons for their decisions. If someone thought of doing Tuba Mirum with the solo in the bassoon part, it wouldn't be historically "incorrect". But that person would try to think of a good artistic or musical reason that would make it compelling...and probably come out of that reflection empty-handed! (Nothing against bassoons but...)

[bcschipper]

Thank you for the explanations of "historically informed performance". I especially like the Bolero example.

So here is a project I like to do at some point. Play 4 versions of the tuba mirum back-to-back:

1. Tuba mirum with modern tenor
2. Tuba mirum with sackbut
3. Tuba mirum with alto
4. Tuba mirum with bassoon

The aim is to generate a distribution of renditions. Perhaps neither is relevant itself but their "convex combination" is relevant for giving us an idea of the "space of possible renditions".